Tag: Friends

The fact that men are paid more than women for doing the same or similar job is well-known. Feminist organisations have campaigned to close this gap, and also to make it clear that women are not standing for it. One recent analysis estimated that at the current pace of change, the UK pay gap will not be eradicated until 2069.

Not only do men “do a lot less” for more pay, but feel entitled to more.

Men do a lot less and they are less demanding on themselves and their standards are lower, yet they feel entitled to ask for a raise or a promotion.

This will not surprise any woman who has seen her male counterparts spend an hour playing online poker before striding into the boss’s office and cockily asking for a pay rise. This is all fuel to the fire in our sexist culture. Women rarely feel good enough about themselves, and tend to feel under pressure to do more for less praise and fewer pounds. Whereas men can roll into the office looking like death in a carrier bag, women tend to be under pressure to look as fresh as a daisy.

I was once asked why lesbians always looked scruffy and overweight, which I interpreted as over a size 10 and devoid of make-up and heels. I explained that many heterosexual women would dress the same way if they did not feel the need to compensate for being, well, women in a man’s world, and that it was terrible that every part of the female form – from our hair to our toes – is up for a preen, paint, spray or squeeze. Men, even in today’s metrosexual culture, make far less effort, and yet seem to get away with it.

Celebrity men can be adored while wearing grubby shorts, scuffed trainers and hair sticking up at the crown, while women get the front page of Take a Break or Heat for going to the shops in trackies – and not in a good way. Men get younger models despite being over the hill, whereas women get pity and Netflix.

Even when it comes to poor performance in the sack, men enjoy affectionate, sympathetic portrayals in Hollywood films, for example, I Think I Love My Wife and Bonnie and Clyde, whereas directors portray their female counterparts as desperate, pathetic, frigid and often even psychotic.

Men who stay at home to look after kids, or turn up at the school gates, are seen as selfless gods.

When it comes to household chores, women’s time cleaning up children’s’ poo and vomit is not so much undervalued as dismissed altogether. But men who stay at home to look after kids, or turn up at the school gates, are seen as selfless gods. These days, after decades of feminism, men do more chores and childcare – but not much more, and still far less than women. According to research by the feminist writer Beatrix Campbell, over the past three decades, the time that men dedicated to childcare rose at a rate of about 30 seconds per day, per year. Their contribution to housework rose at a rate of one minute per day, per year.

My final point about men doing less and getting more money, praise (or both) is one most women are united on: men cooking. It is clear, watching men with their BBQ sets, or assembling a curry in the kitchen, that to them, cooking does not feel like “housework” in the way cleaning does. Let’s face it, if it did, they probably would not be so keen to wreck the kitchen or patio while wearing an apron adorned with a “dude with the food” slogan.

Feminists still have much left to do before we are even close to being liberated from the shackles of patriarchal privilege, and this is yet more unpaid work we women will have to undertake.

A study of more than 8,000 adults found that two out of five men and one-third of women thought that a woman was partially to blame for being sexually assaulted if she was out late at night, drinking and wearing a short skirt.

This isn’t shocking because it’s new – it’s shocking because it’s nothing new. Even today, in the midst of marches to highlight injustices against women, archaic attitudes still burn bright. There still exists a mind set that sees nothing extraordinary, repellent or plain wrong about blaming a woman for being sexually attacked simply because of the way she’s dressed or because she’s been drinking.

In the study, there was the usual boorish tosh from people who seem to think that droning platitudes about “personal responsibility” puts the little feminist ladies straight. Perhaps in some misguided attempt to play devil’s advocate.

It bewilderingly suggested that women in short skirts were looking for sex. Erm, no, not all women wearing short skirts are looking for sex and frankly who cares if they are? Looking for sex is not the same as wanting to be sexually attacked. The first is a matter of personal agency, the second is a crime.

As it happens, I’m all for personal responsibility – women looking out for themselves and each other. I remain a huge fan of the “girl pack”, which certainly helped keep me safe on many a wild night out, even when I was wearing one of my special “fuck me” mini-skirts.

However, I’ve come to realise that this angle is a tedious red herring – no one concerned about rape has ever argued in favour of people taking less personal responsibility. No one has ever said: “Women should definitely not look after themselves – they should place themselves in harm’s way at every conceivable opportunity.”

People who are concerned about rape issues want it to be acknowledged that the only person to blame for a sexual attack is… the sexual attacker. Not only because the person being raped has suffered enough without being somehow blamed, but also because the very notion of someone provoking their own sexual attack, with their choice of dress or behaviour, is offensive and ridiculous. Rape isn’t fundamentally about sex or attraction, it’s about violence, abuse, power and opportunity.

If it’s astonishing that two out of five men still require this basic education in who’s to blame for sexual assault, then it’s downright depressing that one-third of women are just as ill-informed. It suggests an attitude among some women that dressing and acting in a certain way deserves a certain vile outcome. A woman-on-woman psychological distancing, a treacherous sense of them and us, that is truly disturbing. Though is it really so surprising or just a reminder that there’s no convenient gender barricade for the kind of social conditioning that produces rape misinformation?

In truth, these prejudices swirl around us all the time, a poison gas to be breathed in by men and women alike. Thus, while it’s supposed to be men who succumb to Madonna-whore syndrome, women are not, it seems, immune. All of us are susceptible to this brutal compartmentalisation, dividing women into the pure and good (who don’t deserve to be raped) and drunken sluts who do.

If people want to talk about personal responsibility, then here’s an opportunity to demonstrate some – by fighting these prejudices all the way.

Devastating news: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg isn’t your friend. Zuckerberg, who’s promised to combat fake news, may be a bit fake himself, at least where his chummy, spontaneous Facebook posts are concerned, including ones on jogging, reading with his daughter and some excruciating “joshing” with A-listers such as Morgan Freeman.

Apparently, Facebook staff produce their boss’s charming posts. Which sounds almost as though Zuckerberg were a billionaire CEO, heavily invested in personal “brand management”, who’s been putting emphasis on a more presidential, down-with-the-people image. Oh, hang on…

If we’re all feeling a little unfriended right now, it’s small comfort that Zuckerberg appears to be even less friendly towards his Hawaiian neighbours, some of whom are being strongly encouraged (involving legal action) to sell him land for his beachfront estate. Though it’s shocking to find that Zuckerberg isn’t our buddy, it’s even more upsetting to discover some people are so thick they believed the social media mogul was “liking” their cat photos. These people need to stop being so gullible – President Zuckerberg wouldn’t like that.

Scots may be gratified to learn that Mel Gibson was (sort of) responsible for sparking an interest in Scottish independence. Talking about his 1995 film, Braveheart, in which he played William Wallace, Gibson observed: “It certainly woke something up there in Scotland. I know they achieved partial autonomy and I think it is a good thing.” (It’s believed that Gibson was referring to the creation of the Scottish parliament, which followed the 1997 devolution referendum.)

All of which sounds wholly correct. It’s a historical fact that BB (“Before Braveheart”), people in Scotland didn’t realise that they were Scottish – they just thought that they were English with sexier accents or Irish with less sexy accents. Back then, in the dark days of BB, the Scots didn’t even know that Scotland was part of Great Britain. It was only when Gibson appeared as Wallace, shouting “Freedom!” while sporting tartan and wild unbrushed hair that Scottish people finally realised what had been going on with this “United Kingdom” malarkey and, boy, were some of them mad!

After his Braveheart observations, Gibson modestly said: “I like to stay out of the politics of other people’s nations so I won’t go any further.” Such a display of reticence was noticeably absent from his “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!” drunken outburst when stopped by Malibu police in 2006.

Sadly, it was also a lost opportunity for film buffs everywhere. I, for one, would love to get the inside track on how other of Gibson’s films shaped world events. Say, how What Women Want paved the way for modern feminism. Or how Mad Max made it all kick off in the Middle East This has film school module written all over it.

My first huge film crush was on Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Boy, the dreams I had about that woman. How enthralled I was by the classic tale of a wrongly sectioned woman leading her estranged son and a benign cyborg to hunt down an evil cyborg and avert the apocalypse. Terminator 2 remains radical: it has no romance subplot and an unmaternal mother at its heart. I was so mad for it.

But the action woman now is granted a little more breathing space to be something else: a lone hunter; an athletic warrior; a tough woman given an irrefutable mission to save society; a traumatised avenger; a secret agent who’s just doing her job; a serious, even brooding presence who doesn’t have to concede any feminine niceties.

There are some films that satisfy these basic criteria, although Angelina Jolie has bagged many of them, like Salt, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wanted, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. There’s Haywire, Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil films, Jennifer Garner twirling daggers in Elektra, Kate Beckinsale doing vampire-werewolf stuff in the Underworld franchise and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in the Avengers films. You even have survivalist Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

On the surface, this all looks great: big films with one woman character at the heart, shouting and fighting, competing, gaining vengeance or justice or completing the mission just like the men. Perhaps there are even one or two women directors. But the underlying, sexist rules are the same: the female action hero is always white, beautiful and sexy. If she is older than 45 she must still look 25; her body is toned to “perfection” and on display at all times. Above all, she is alone. She has no women comrades, no female friends, no sisters or women allies, no crew of homegirls.

A phrase has been coined for these women: “the fighting fucktoy”. A singular presence, charismatic and fast-thinking, but she is there to be looked at, not listened to, and she is not a woman’s woman. Her character doesn’t joke around with other women; she lives in relation to men, opposing them, playing them, hunting them, hating them, using them. Her narrative, her thinking, her dialogue and her impulses are always something to do with a man. Even when you have a woman front and centre, the symbolic importance of what she’s doing is undercut by the exceptionalism: she is presented as the one woman out of all of them who could do the job, the woman who is special, who is not like other women. She can be an alien, an assassin, a superhero; but she can’t be seen developing normal relationships of any kind with other women.

There are some exceptions, like the Alien films, which have female main characters in a mixed-sex crew that gets gored, crunched, beheaded, ruptured and dissolved in alien acid jizz with pleasing gender equality. And Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 gives Gamora a fantastic, angry, traumatised sister who wants to murder her abusive father and an antennaed empath character, aka “bug lady”, who’s played for laughs – but the story is still really about Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord and his Freudian struggles with his father.

An alien arriving at an Earth cineplex would conclude that for every eight men on the planet, there were only one or two women. Both as fictional female characters within the narrative playing out on screen and as women working in the film industry, women are isolated and outnumbered. They are the only women in the fictional cast and the only women on the team clocking in every morning. Hollywood can show one great female action character in one scene in one film at a time, but evidently two is too much to stomach; and women must not be shown enjoying the same easy, numerous occupation of space, speaking time, competence, character, friendliness and agency as men.

Right now, Patty Jenkins’s film Wonder Woman is breaking records all over the world. But for four-fifths of the film, Gal Gadot’s Diana, Queen of the Amazons, is the only woman on screen, alongside a whole bunch of forgettable men including Chris Pine, who literally steps in and hogs their scenes. Wonder Woman is radical in that the sweet and strong character of Diana is openly appalled by and refuses to accept the corruption, hypocrisy and immorality she sees around her. She is disgusted and offended by the unevolved, patronising machismo she is forced to navigate when she arrives in wartime London.

But the truly thrilling, moving and radical section of Wonder Woman happens briefly and right at the beginning, during Diana’s formative years on Themyscira, aka Amazon Island – a glorious haven of dynamic, athletic, strong, active women. I’m crossing my fingers that the Wonder Woman sequel will be set exclusively there. I’ve never seen anything like it on the big screen: women, many women, creating the rules and values of a society together, bonding, arguing, deciding and dynamically occupying space.

Single girls have never had it so good. The worst thing about being free, is that it generally doesn’t last.

No sooner have you dusted yourself down, picked up the pieces and returned to that blissful state of emotional tranquillity and delicious self-indulgence, then along comes somebody to mess it all up again. Within weeks, your social life has been pruned down to the occasional dinner party with other couples, while weekends are spent fighting over the remote control and trying to lure the lumpish body next to you out for a walk. A life that you managed perfectly yourself becomes a minefield of tricky situations brought about by attempting to share responsibilities.

Yet the coveted state of singledom continues to be seen as a compromise. When was the last time you heard somebody say pityingly, ‘Poor thing, she’s still dating, you know?’ – yet that’s exactly the sort of presumptuous insult that’s hurled at the single dweller on a regular basis. This despite the fact that many relationships involve more misery and compromise than most people who choose to go it alone will experience in a lifetime. The accepted wisdom, that from the day we’re born we’re duty bound to seek out a like-minded person who’ll make two become one, defies logic. You only need the most basic grasp of mathematics to know that two is always two.

I had my macro Damascene revelation on the joys of being single about six months ago. It was early morning and the pale light of a wintry sun trickled through my bed-room blinds as I stretched myself diagonally over the expanse of my double bed. Wearing my pyjama bottoms and tee, I shuffled into the kitchen and prepared myself a coffee and a bowl of cereal. Then, picking up the newspaper from my doorstep, I slipped back between the still-warm sheets.

As I lolled around on my bed reading the news and trying to remember my plans for the day ahead, I experienced a quiver of smug contentment. No more breakfast television, no more checking my watch when I was enjoying the company of friends, no more declining of invitations from people who bored her or vice versa, as much theatre as I wanted. The list of my blessings was endless. I was free. I was single again. After years of whining self-pity during my regular phases of being single I’d suddenly realised that, far from a being punishment, it was an idyllic state to be savoured.

Of course, you can write me off as being a smug yuppie with a comfortable lifestyle and a selfish nature. But you’d be wrong. My modicum of financial security is hard earned, and as for being single, I’ve tried as hard as anyone to make terrible relationships work. Yet it never occurred to me to rise to the converse challenge of creating a worthwhile lifestyle alone. Some of my ex-girlfriends remain good friends, but as I watch them fall like skittles into new unions, I find surprisingly that I don’t envy them at all. I’ve no doubt that despite my best efforts I won’t remain in this heavenly state uninterrupted, but the chances are I will return to it again, and again, and again. Marriage has an undeserved reputation as the only way of life worth aspiring to, cohabitation comes a close second, and the popular misconception is that no one would choose to be single. A faintly hypocritical scenario when you look at the state of modern relationships. In the clear light of day, and with the right attitude, going it alone offers many advantages.

Nevertheless, being single, particularly as a woman, continues to get a bad press. Pitied (poor thing can’t get a man), vilified (single-mum syndrome) or condescended to (isn’t it time you grew up) but never celebrated as a chosen way of life. A woman finds no respect forthcoming, and can only pray that the day the label ‘single’ turns to ‘spinster’ is further away than her menopause. For centuries, men have been prolonging their ‘merry bachelor’ days. Is it mere coincidence that women only reach a similar jovial state when they become ‘merry widows’? I suppose it stands to reason. If a woman has never had the ‘official’ stamp of approval from a man, then what on earth has she got to be happy about?

Any declaration on the joys of being single is invariably met with a sympathetic smile and a pat on the head for being brave enough to pretend you’re not suicidal. If you don’t answer questions regarding your love life with a resigned shrug and an ‘I’ll try to do better’ attitude, people think there’s something wrong with you or your gay. No matter how good a time you’re having as a single woman, you are expected to be a bit ashamed. It wouldn’t do to turn up to a party and boast about the incredible sex you had all weekend with a woman you met at a fabulous party two weeks previous.

Sex for the single girl is unquestionably a tricky issue. Even in these supposedly emancipated times, it’s still regarded as an activity that men should take pride in doing a lot of and women should try hard to pretend they never indulge in – unless it’s in a monogamous, long-term relationship. Well, we all make mistakes and the longevity of the relationship is something none of us can guarantee when, overcome by passion, we find ourselves cavorting on the sofa.

Women may be less profligate with their sexual favours, but they get just as bored by regular bad sex, or indeed just the same old sex.

Most of my friends question me relentlessly about whom I’m dating. My independently minded friends aren’t less interested, they’re just way too busy living their own lives – something I’m afraid cohabitees stop doing the minute they start sharing a front door. How else do you explain the wistful look in their eyes when you tell them you’re off to France for a month?

Now, finally, women have the opportunity to enjoy the lifestyle they’ve worked hard to create. Only a lunatic would leap off that bandwagon having only just managed to manoeuvre your way on! The second your deposit account has upwards of a three-figure balance is surely not the time to throw in the towel. The fun is only just beginning. Hooking up with someone involves such a plethora of compromises that just thinking about it makes me nervous. I haven’t slogged my guts out for 20 years or so to spend my much-needed holidays with a woman who wants to play Scrabble on a sun lounger while I trail around the cultural hotspots desperately wishing I had a girlfriend there to keep me company in bed in the afternoons.

I want to see the world, meet Machiavellian people, read more books, sleep in, stay out, spend three weeks in a row without switching the television on, eat toast and Marmite four times a day for a month. I can let weeks go by without venturing anywhere near a supermarket. Contrary to popular perception, when I open the fridge door and discover only a bottle of wine. I’m not depressed for a moment. Instead I’m beside myself with relief that it’s not full of snack-sized Babybels and six-packs of hideous fruit yogurts.

The independence of a career introduces the possibility of choosing to live alone, and it’s an improvement to the status quo that my generation seem all too happy to embrace.

Perhaps my own experiences of ‘happy coupledom’ have something to do with my reticence to share door keys at present. They say that living alone is lonely, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as alone as in the twilight moments of a relationship when a once-busy double bed has become as wide and desolate as Antarctica. The possibility of reaching out for comfort from the other side is as ridiculous as warming your hands on an ice cube.

I have a suspicion that spending more time on enjoying your life and less time on seeking a partner may ultimately be the secret to both. One thing’s for sure, though. Sitting around moping and waiting for your significant other is a waste of time. And that’s one thing you never have enough of.

Can men and women ever be “just friends”? The correct answer is: “Yes, obviously, so why in God’s name do paper editors, authors of dating books and headline-seeking psychologists keep asking?”

My evidence is as follows: one, I’m female; two, a good friend of mine is male; three, the prospect of romantic involvement with him strikes me, as absurd, but friends yes.

What’s striking about the “just friends” debate is how useless it is. If you believe such friendships are common, it’s meaningless to be told you’re deluded. Conversely, if you are a woman tortured by unrequited love for a man friend, it’s little use to learn that some other men and women don’t feel that way: you still have an issue that needs addressing.

The real reason some people continue to deny the possibility of such friendships, I believe, is that they subscribe to what you might call the Harsh Realities of Relationships. Not, let’s be clear, because they’re more in touch with reality, but because they derive such enormous satisfaction from believing they are.

Just as the Harsh Realities position on male-female friendships is that sex always gets in the way, the Harsh Realities take on dating is that it’s a battlefield, where playing mind-games is essential; relationships, meanwhile, are mutually manipulative power struggles.

The problem isn’t that this is always wrong – it isn’t – but that its claim to insight is unearned: if you always pick the most cynical explanation, you’ll sound “brutally honest” every time.

So, might approaching strangers and asking them to sleep with you, as per the old Russian joke. Just because a strategy works as a numbers game doesn’t mean it gets at anything true about human nature. Some cross-sex friendships are more platonic, others less so. Some people are more manipulative, others less so. And so, boringly, on. The real harsh reality is that reality isn’t always harsh.

The dilemma this morning is I am a woman in my early 20s hoping at some point in the future is to have a long-term relationship and then eventually to get married. I have been single for a little while, but recently I was surprised by a good friend’s admission that she was “in love with” me and has been for some time.

However, I’m inclined to follow my feelings and let her down, but should I give it a chance to see if deeper feelings follow the considered rationale?

I appreciate there are many who think it’s highly sophisticated to be able to pull out their smart phone and find a partner for passion in the vicinity within moments. Phone apps like Tinder, Grindr, Happn, Findhrr and other vowel-eschewing online destinations have taken the legwork out of our sexual liaisons but have they in any way improved the quality of the encounter?

Putting sex on a Google Map for those in the mood for love is one thing, but it’s curious, isn’t it, that when we’re looking for a partner for more than an instant fix we tend to employ the same criteria? Top of our list of essential components is whether or not we are overcome by desire: a state of being that has nothing to do with reason and thought and much to do with base instinct of sex. However, sex (though on the “to do” list) slips down the list of priorities for daily harmony pretty soon.

It’s definitely important to be able to countenance coupling with the person you select, but long-term passion will dwindle and if you haven’t got respect, friendship and a genuine interest in the person you’re with there’s not a chance of the relationship surviving. That’s why unions embarked on in the haste of desire and sustained on little else, more often in teen years, tend to be the first to crumble.

I’m not usually one to advocate alcohol, but imbibing something that might briefly liberate me from rational decision-making could be the key to figuring out my options. Or a night out with no holds barred could mark the beginning of a new life, and, dealt with decently, doesn’t need to end my friendship if not.

Do we measure happiness based on how many true friends we have? On how much time we spend with family? On whether we have found true love, and what we did with that discovery? On whether we’re chasing dreams or just living one day after the other? Is happiness measured on how many times a day we feel scared and face that fear, or how many times contempt takes over? How can we say we are truly happy, or happier than another, if measuring happiness can be so… difficult?

When I was young — not just young, but at the specific age of 5 — I thought happiness could be measured by how much people loved you. That theory proved to be wrong as soon as I was old enough to understand love can’t be easily measured, either. Then, I remember thinking — at the age of 13 — that happiness was measured by success. If I had the job I wanted, I would be happy. If I was studying in the college I wanted, I would be happy. If I was at any level walking towards professional success, surely that would mean absolute happiness.

I don’t know how to measure happiness, exactly. I just know when it’s there. It’s when we breathe in and it isn’t only air that we bring to our lungs, but a sparkle of something very close to life itself, which is obviously ridiculous and absurd and a bit redundant. That’s what I feel happiness is — being ridiculous and absurd and a bit redundant.

In my honest opinion, happiness crawls under your skin the same unexpected way sadness does. It piles up but you don’t see it, and then all of sudden it’s there, and you can’t even plan an escape. You’re happy. You don’t know how much — if you ever learn how to measure happiness, do tell; I’ll be forever curious — but you know it’s there. You’re breathing in life, and yet breathing out love. I’ve never been especially good with biology, as I don’t understand the mechanisms of life, but I’m not clueless enough to ignore it when it happens.